West Coast coach John Worsfold has promised supporters the AFL club will work its way up the ladder next year after claiming the 2010 wooden spoon on Saturday.

The young Eagles side showed plenty of fight to be only four points behind at halftime against the second-placed Geelong in their round-22 clash at Skilled Stadium.

But the Cats powered away in the second half to win 16.16 (112) to 10.8 (68) with Gary Ablett kicking four goals in a best-afield display.

"I've done a lot of work looking at where our list's at and to me it's obvious that this year was our starting point," the 2006 Eagles premiership coach said on Saturday.

"We're starting from the bottom and we'll start working our way up. It moves fairly quickly as we've seen from sides like Melbourne and Richmond who were at the bottom for two or three years ... "It can move pretty quickly so we'll make sure we knuckle down, do the work and make it move fairly quickly.

"We've made the call last year that we lost a lot of our experience and that meant that we were starting from our base this year.

"This was always going to be our toughest year and we've got through it and as much as it's not nice, we're prepared for next year." Worsfold pointed to first-year players Brad Sheppard and Ash Smith as the future of the club.

"They're going to come good and we'll add in Adam Selwood and Matt Priddis and Darren Glass and Daniel Kerr and those guys next year," he said.

Worsfold was warmly greeted by club powerbrokers in the change rooms on Saturday night after the match and feels heartened by the board's backing.

"It's nice to know that the board are aware and supportive of what we're doing and the board will reap the benefits of it in the near future," he said.

Worsfold said although the Eagles won only four games this season, they'll go into 2011 in better shape with players such as Brad Ebert, Scott Selwood, Tom Swift, Nic Naitanui and Chris Masten getting more games under their belts.

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